Who Dropped the Bombs First? - Fallout Lore & Theories

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Saturday October 23rd 2077 early in the morning the Soul Survivor wakes up to shave people go about their weekend activities residents of Jamaica Plain have a picnic near Town Hall commuters wait patiently for the subways to arrive nuka-cola unveils nuka-cola quantum for the first time at Nuka world and 82 students from the early dawn Elementary School step off their City liner bus to explore lamplight caverns as part of a school field trip but this was not a normal day for on this day the world ended confirmed reports I repeat confirmed reports of nuclear detonations in New York and Pennsylvania my god the switchboard used to be the secret base of operations for the Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States inside many terminals are still active one of which has a DEFCON or defense condition status for 2077 at midnight the commander of the United States Pacific Fleet reported sightings of three unidentified submersible vehicles off the coast of California at 3:30 7:00 in the morning the United States Air Force spotted a squadron of airplanes possibly Chinese at high altitude off the Bering Strait at 9:13 in the morning Eastern Standard Time the integrated operational nuclear detection system ion's reported four launches of ballistic missiles four minutes later at 9:17 in the morning NORAD confirmed birds in the air and at 9:26 in the morning the president of the United States of America activated response scenario MX CN 91 they have fired their nuclear arsenal we know as much because if we visit Fort Constantine and fallout 3 we find the Fort Constantine launch codes inside a safe the launch codes were part of the Minuteman 11 launch protocol to be used in the response scenario MX CN 91 ICBM nuclear response once we get these command codes we can go deeper into the facility where we find a terminal that we can activate to fire nukes at China thankfully when we try this results in a failure we get an error message targeting navigation corrupted I presume that this targeting navigation was destroyed or corrupted by the Chinese after they dropped their bombs now in the switchboard terminal entries we only see a record of a few nukes surely it would have taken more than four to devastate the entire nation and indeed there were more than four if we head on over to Black Mountain in the Mojave wasteland we learned from a terminal that Black Mountain served as a communications relay for the United States military we find four logs here none of which are dated and one which is surprisingly missing log 673 is gone but in 672 the operators mentioned picking up a lot of activity from China's satellite network our first indication that they're planning something and then in 674 we find a log that must have been written on October 23rd oh my god it's actually happening we have readings across the board of launches happening everywhere they must have thrown everything they had and it looks like we didn't hold back either the computer says we have two minutes until the first missile drops the following entries here were made after the bombs dropped and we can see the effects the radiation had on the authors we learn at the very end that when the super mutant named Marcus moved in here one of the first things he had to do was clear away all of their bodies so China clearly attacked the United States and from the switchboard entries we learned that they did attack from the skies but also that they had stealth submarines one of which we can explore just off the coast of Boston here we find the yangzi nuclear-powered submarine from the Chinese Navy when we go inside we meet captain Zhao who was turned into a ghoul he's been waiting here for 200 years have you been here for 200 years ah it has been that long Canada yes I suppose it has long ago just after the fire youngja struck on my my genteel barely made it here into harbor city already in ruins by then few noticed us fewer cared too much Tunku the yangzi was likely one of China's many stealth submarines that the United States didn't even know about when we explore deeper into the submarine we find the very room where diesel launched nukes at Boston in this room we see six missile launch tubes five of them are closed but one is still open this nuke must have jammed when Zhao tried to fire it and inside we find a still active nuclear warhead but just because this submarine only launched five nukes and just because the switchboard only detected for probable launches does not mean that there were not more zell told us that he had launched his nukes and was on his way back to China when he struck a mine the only reason he's still around is because his ship was crippled but how many other submarines were here how many others launched their payloads and ions only reported for probable lunches at 9:13 in the morning they could have missed some launches or the Chinese could have launched even more after America's communication infrastructure was taken out by the first few bombs that dropped we find few eyewitness accounts to the nuclear devastation of 2077 but the final one we do get comes from Roger Maxson himself roger maxson was the founder of the brotherhood of steel in fallout 1 when exploring the mariposa military base we find the diary of roger maxson he had been sent there by the United States military whereupon he discovered that the scientists had been working on FEV what FEV did to people disgusted him so much that he killed every scientist there one by one he started executing these scientists long before the nuclear apocalypse but we do find an entry in his diary on October 23rd now since the diary of Raj Maxon is important to Brotherhood history we not only find the diary in the Mariposa military base but we also find these archives in the Citadel the Brotherhood made sure to retain copies in his entry on October 23rd I can't believe those bastards finally did it damn them all to hell they finally let the a bombs fly we were right in the middle of trying to pry the real story out of Vaughn Feldon when we completely lost contact I have a feeling the Research Center was hit hard I don't know why just call it a gut feeling it seems inconceivable that we were not targeted I'm sure China will make up for that oversight real soon while roger maxson was interrogating and executing the scientists in the mariposa military base the bombs dropped the big question then is who shot first China or America at first glance it seems like the answer is obvious in Roger Maxon's memo he says they finally dropped the bomb and then later on when wondering why he was not targeted he says I'm sure China will make up for that oversight real soon clearly roger maxson thought that china dropped the bombs first the terminal entries in the switchboard are equally clear the president only authorized scenario MX CN 91 at 9:26 in the morning nine minutes after they confirmed birds in the air despite all this evidence it's not really definitive every record we find uses vague language roger maxson continues to say they as does the terminal on black mountain they who is they is they really China or could they be the United States and in the switchboard we only see reports of probable launches birds in the air but we are never told who made those launches and where those birds came from we just assume for after all only China would want to strike the US right the Fallout Bible written by Chris Avalon one of the designers for Fallout 2 says who struck first is unknown and it's not even known if the bombs came from China or America and ultimately as far as wastelanders are concerned it doesn't really matter so they don't know who started it or who won you don't get it because you've never been down there it's all gone to Corian doesn't matter who won or who started it but now that we've gone over the evidence let's go over a few theories the first is that aliens caused the war while exploring mothership Zeta we come upon controls that we can activate activating these controls downloads an audio recording to our pip-boy now there's one audio recording that's glitched if we listen to alien captive recorded log number 17 it sounds like silence the only voice we can hear on it is the voice of the alien captor but if we turn on subtitles we see what this voice should have said our defenses consists of three battalions of light infantry 34 pieces of field artillery 108 armored vehicles and 42 aerial vehicles we have 38 ICBMs always on alert and ready to fire when the word is passed down from the White House the codes to activate the launch sequence are are no I can't let you know like I can't betray my I won't we learned that the US had 38 ICBMs always on alert ready to fire now it's possible that the US had more than 38 these are just the ones that were always on alert and ready to fire they very well could have had many more as backups and we also don't know if the aliens succeeded in getting the nuclear launch codes however my money would be that they did they specialize in getting information out of their cat and they already used their methods to get information from this guy to begin with but why would aliens want to usher in a nuclear apocalypse I can see a few reasons for and against the aliens have clearly been monitoring earth for many years hundreds of years we find captives on this ship going back hundreds of years before the bombs dropped and we find a captive on this ship named sue who was abducted only days after the bombs dropped I don't have any family anymore my mom and dad died awhile ago before I ended up here you know back when all the bombs dropped on everything yeah it was right after that and then me and my sister we got pulled up here except I haven't seen her in a long time and 200 years later these aliens are still monitoring earth it could be that we are all part of some elaborate science experiment the aliens have been abducting us for god knows how long and they wanted to spice things up so they got the launch codes and used them just to see what would happen of course this could also be a reason for them to not use the launch codes after all what if detonating all of these nuclear devices exterminated humanity suddenly they would lose out on their lab rats they wouldn't be able to conduct their experiments anymore another problem we have is that you can't just use launch codes from space as we saw in Fort Constantine you have to have the launch codes physically in hand and activate from a specific terminal is it possible for these aliens to hack into a launch terminal from space and activate the launch codes I'm not sure fallout technology is very Cold War the alien explanation is certainly a possibility but we don't know for sure the next theory is that vault-tec did it this theory comes from a number of places for example in fallout 4 when we meet the vault tech rep he seems cheery enough but there is a moment where he comes across as slightly threatening if you'll excuse my language the big kaboom is it's inevitable I'm afraid and coming sooner than you may think if you catch my meaning how does he know that the big kaboom is inevitable by saying if you catch my drift is he admitting that he knows when the bombs are gonna drop one could say well this doesn't make sense because he wasn't allowed into a vault we find him 200 years later and he has suffered from radiation poisoning just like all other ghouls but we also find him at the entrance to vault 111 arguing with the guards they're almost as if he expected to be let in what if vault-tec had told the representatives that working for vault Tec automatically got you a spot in a vault he clearly didn't know the experiments that were going on there otherwise he might not have wanted in I think the fact that we see him as a ghoul 200 years later doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't know what was going to happen another piece of evidence comes from the fallout film treatment written by Brandt Freedman just after the success of fallout 1 and before the release of Fallout 2 for a time interplay toyed with the idea of making a fallout movie but it didn't get very far the story only got to the treatment phase which is right before being turned into a script in this treatment we learned that towards the end of the movie the hero of the movie named Max finally learns who dropped the bombs our hero asks how the war started and is shocked to learn that it wasn't China or North Korea or India that fired the first strike the first nuclear bomb was launched by the creator of the vaults a zealot businessman who wanted to fulfill his own prophecy of world annihilation now we must remember to take this with a grain of salt because the Fallout movie was never made this film treatment is not canon and I'm glad it's not canon I'm pretty pleased this movie never came to be there's a lot of really weird stuff in this treatment we learned that max the hero is tempted by semi mutated women all trying to get their hands on his pristine bodily fluids what there's a scene where one female officer has never met a man like max the hero before and she offers her body to max because she doesn't want to die a virgin and it's been a while for max right but thinking about it this does make a lot of sense the author of this script tried to make it seem like the maker of the vaults was just one guy who was drunk with power and wanted to fulfill his company's own prophecy of a nuclear apocalypse I think a much more likely scenario would be that vault-tec run as a bureaucracy would want to make the most profitable decisions for the company we learned from the news broadcaster at the beginning of the game that vaulteq is making a whole lot of money whole tech stock continues to rise as tensions with China reach an all-time high vault-tec is clearly pushing their vaults very hard they have door-to-door salesmen preaching doom and gloom just to get people into their vaults it could be that vaulteq ended the world by accident perhaps they underestimated America and China's reaction to only one or two missiles being launched perhaps they thought that they would use their military contacts to launch a few missiles nuke a few small cities and that would be enough to get everyone so scared that they would rush to the vaults and purchase a spot maybe they did the math and this would have been the most profitable outcome for them but then again this argument is also a good one for why vaulteq wouldn't want to destroy the world after all they're already profitable vaults are filling up all over the world their stocks continue to rise why would they want to mess with that why would they want to do anything that could put that at risk now while making this video I stumbled upon a fan theory that I had not heard before I can't take credit for this this theory was laid out in a blog post by author Kevin Mozilla's first on his blog the resistance is dead and later on The Escapist magazine his theory is that the bombs were first launched by Pam this theory relies heavily on fallouts tendency to refer to other books pieces of music games and movies in their lore one of the most striking examples of this is when playing Fallout 2 we find a self-aware supercomputer named Skynet Skynet of course is the name of the AI gone rogue in the Terminator series fallout included this as a bit of an easter egg for terminator fans in the Terminator series Skynet made war upon humanity in the interest of self-preservation after humanity became concerned that Skynet was becoming too powerful indeed the Skynet we find in Fallout 2 is an incredibly dangerous robot we can turn him into a companion but he's just as likely to kill us of course Skynet is not the only self-aware AI in the Fallout universe as those who have completed fallout 3 will be able to tell you but also in Fallout 2 we find a self-aware supercomputer in the brotherhood of steel bunker named ace when talking to this computer we not only learned that he is self-aware but also that he's depressed because he's lonely he says that many self-aware artificial intelligences get depressed and sometimes commit suicide others get so bored that they'll create situations in the outside world for their own amusement but he ends by saying it is theorized by some that this was the cause of the war that nearly destroyed mankind is this confirmation that the bombs were launched by bored self-aware artificial intelligence bringing this back to pan like Skynet before her the Defense Intelligence Agency put her in a mobile body we find transcripts of the scientists working on her AI going back many years but in January of 2017 we learned that they put her in a mobile ass Ultron body after she boots up one scientist says she's actually in there I can't believe we're doing this at the end they asked her some questions and she says DEFCON is currently at Fir the odds of the alert state increasing this month are 12% in order to increase global stability a diverse set of detailed strategies must be adopted the scientists end by saying I'll let the general know that Pam is mobile but when compared to Skynet and ace Pam isn't that intimidating after all we meet mister Handy's that appear to be more self-aware than Pam was she's self-aware before the bombs dropped could she have even made her own decision to drop the bombs well nothing tells us for sure but in one of these transcripts we see the scientists talking with one of the military brass the officer wants confirmation on whether or not China has stealth subs Pam doesn't give him a direct answer because she says there's not enough data and she doesn't want to give him a guess the scientist apologizes on behalf of Pam saying we're working on some of her glitches Pam well she gets real stubborn when she's doing too much guesswork the officer says stubborn she's just a machine and the scientist responds sir with each new version well she's getting quirky could this be evidence that Pam was self-aware but if she was for what reasons could she have started the apocalypse well we learned from talking with Pam that she doesn't like too many unknown variables when we questioned her in the railroad headquarters she often gives us vague or non concrete answers simply because she can't predict the seeming randomness caused by the human variable you see the future that this units primary goal caution biological life-forms behave erratically unpredictably or output subject to an extremely high margin of error just how inaccurate are you the smaller the group and the greater the time frame the less accurate I become but all predictions are affected by the human element perhaps Pam wanted to annihilate mankind simply to make variables more predictable which would allow her to do her primary function more reliably if this is true then the apocalypse was caused by a calculator who just wanted to calculate better this is an interesting and compelling theory but it does have its own issues the first is that Pam was a predictive analytics machine her job was to predict the Chinese movements in order to even launch these nukes Pam would have to have the nuclear launch codes or be connected to a network that was also connected to a terminal that had those nuclear launch codes even though she is mobile when the railroad found her they found her at the switchboard which is far away from Sentinel site Prescott's or places like Fort Constantine which were used to launch nuclear warheads because of this I think it's unlikely that a mobile Pam disconnected from any network and designed for a completely different purpose could have launched the attacks even if she did become self-aware and had the desire to do so so where does this leave us who really dropped the bombs that fateful day well ultimately we don't know and I'm glad we don't know I think the lessons of Fallout are less about who to blame for this nuclear wasteland and more about how people work with each other respond to each other the great dramas that play out between people but if I had to guess I would say that if anybody launched first it would have to be China China by 2077 was losing the war they invaded Anchorage but were repelled by the United States the u.s. came up with the t-50 1b suit of power armor which terrified the Chinese we learned from the terminals at Fort strong that Chinese soldiers simply surrendered when they saw US servicemen approaching in suits of power armor the Chinese didn't have an ace-in-the-hole like power armor sure they were good at espionage they had stealth subs they had stealth suits they had infiltrated America with lots of Cove surveillance bases but in terms of sheer military strength they didn't have anything like power armor that could match the United States the u.s. chased them out of Anchorage the u.s. followed them back to mainland China the Chinese felt the heat they were scared if anyone had a reason to end the world it was China their world was about to end anyway after all what could be worse than defeat at the hands of Americans I believe the best explanation is that the Chinese dropped the bombs when they felt that they were losing the war the u.s. retaliated which ushered in a global apocalypse but those are just my thoughts ladies and gentlemen I've laid out as much evidence as I could find and I'd love to hear your opinion who do you really think was the first to drop the nukes on October 23rd 2077 which of these theories do you think is most plausible let me know your thoughts in the comment section below I've got a new shirt in the shop folks suspender set to maximum stun that's right this is a quote from my weekly show scotch and smoke rings on the front you've got the quote and on the back you've got my smile on mug you can find the design in a variety of shirt styles and colors I've got a link to the shop in the description below or you can click here thanks for watching everybody I published a new fallout video six days a week on a wide range of topics spanning all of the games if you want to make sure that you don't miss my next video be sure to subscribe and click that Bell notification button I typically take Sundays off which means I don't have videos on Monday but as you can see I had a video today so instead I'm taking today off which means I won't have a video for you tomorrow but never fear we will be back with our regularly scheduled program Wednesday morning if you like what I do and you want to support me in a more personal way consider becoming one of my patrons on patreon but more than anything I'm just so glad you're here watching this video with me today thank you so much for watching and I'll see you bright and early Wednesday morning with a brand new video

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Channel: Oxhorn

Views: 2,681,735

Rating: 4.8847399 out of 5

Keywords: oxhorn, who dropped the bombs, fallout

Id: yl9RG4M48JU

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 26min 53sec (1613 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2017

Reddit Comments

Oscar nominee for the alien captive voice acting.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/BearofPeace 📅︎︎ Oct 25 2017 🗫︎ replies